


Once Bitten

by swordliliesandebony



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: 5+1 Things, Awkward Crush, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Sexual Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 09:37:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14186091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swordliliesandebony/pseuds/swordliliesandebony
Summary: 'Fantasy is fair game. Being in love, and being in love with his best friend—with the future king's sworn shield?  Something else entirely.'Five times Ignis fails to confess his love to Gladio and one where he finally manages.





	Once Bitten

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Gladio's birthday. Ignis being semi-secretly in love w/ him is the best gift of all, right?
> 
> [tumblr.](http://swordliliesandebony.tumblr.com/)

Perhaps it actually comes in fits and starts, in little hints and slow realization, but to Ignis's mind and in his consciousness, he falls in love with Gladiolus Amicitia instantly and all at once and an arm pressing his throat and his back pressing the wall. The emotion swells in his chest with heaving breaths courtesy a bout of training that could be any bout of training, the two of them grappling and sparring and turning back and forth around a room too lavish to rightfully be serving such a purpose. It settles harsh and heavy, a near-physical jolt amidst his ribs and just left-of-center with eyes that lock his and hold and bore into him with truly startling ease.

He doesn't know what Gladio realizes in that moment. Perhaps he realizes nothing at all. But time halts for a small flurry of tripped heartbeats, for a stretch of fluttered pulse against a strong forearm, and for their eyes to stay unblinking, fixed, narrowed and then wide. And then, perhaps too slowly—Ignis is more inclined to think far too quickly—Gladio's arm slides away from his throat and his fingers rake through his hair and a chuckle catches in his chest and spreads a smile on his lips and make Ignis think just for a second that he could  _ die  _ from it all.  

"You're distracted. Never seen you miss a dodge like that before." Gladio speaks, makes his assessment when they're still so close that Ignis can smell the sweat on him, can feel the heat of his breath, can feel his body tensing in a way that has become far to familiar over the course of a good few weeks' training. He swallows and his throat feels thick and heavy and much like the words are properly lodged, stuck there in prevention of any response. The sensation eases when Gladio steps back, turns to head for a bench. Ignis appreciates their eyes no longer being set on one another. He appreciates even more all the harsh, defined lines across Gladio's back, curves and shadows playing over all that brilliant new inked adornment. He looks away. He has to look away.

"My apologies. I suppose there's a lot on my mind." Ignis can make an admission and an apology there in the vaguest terms. He's just served as quite a poor partner. And he's served so poorly because his eyes have found a worrisome tendency to lock onto Gladio and see everything other than threat. It's an unusual position to be in, any sudden realizations of love aside. They work well together and they train even better. A near lifetime at it gives one a perfect understanding of the other. It means that Ignis can—under normal circumstance—avoid taking a single hit. And Gladio likewise. It means that he knows with perfect recall the way that this muscle goes pronounced and tense with a leap, or an expression turns heavy and dangerous and damnably appealing before an attempted strike. It means that there would have been no point in denying to Gladio that something was on his mind. Mixed blessings.   

"Gonna tell me what's going on?" Gladio doesn't turn to look at Ignis, but he retrieves a water bottle from his gym bag and he extend an arm behind him in offer. It comes with a sudden sensation of being utterly  _ parched _ , sandpaper in Ignis's throat, and it draws him across the training floor to retrieve. Ignis makes a point to only watch from the corner of his eye when Gladio drinks from his own, uncaring of any mess, water spraying to the back of his throat and over his lips and dripping down his chest only to mingle with a light and overly appealing sheen of sweat. It's maddening. It makes Ignis's heart do that troubling little leap he's become accustomed to when eyeing Gladio. It makes his face go flush, so he turns away to sit.

"No." Ignis responds quick and curt and far too quickly. It makes Gladio look at him, he notes from the corner of his eye. He directs his attention more firmly to the floor and drinks again. His throat still carries that thick, strangled sensation. It still holds the echoes of a strong arm pressed, sweat-damp and too warm and he closes his eyes entirely to try and take the thought away, only to intensify the illusion. "It's not important."

"Is that so?" Gladio's tone carries a hint of amusement. It sits somewhere between unspeakably appealing and unfathomably infuriating. Ignis doesn't stop himself from shooting a glare in his direction, but it melts far too quickly under the warmth of curled lips and appraising eyes. He hates himself for falling so quickly, so hard, so  _ far _ . 

The attraction has been undeniable for far longer than the affection. Ignis doesn't think it's worth beating himself up over that point, though. It's hardly his fault, after all, that his best friend has grown somehow into some ungodly monument to sex appeal. He can hardly be blamed for admiring something so finely crafted. Gladio is a goddamn work of art, and Ignis can hardly be faulted for appreciating as much. Nobody would argue the fact. Nobody could possibly deny how utterly unfair it is for a man to look like that, and to look like that already, just shy of twenty. 

The problem, as far as Ignis is concerned, isn't in his appreciation of all that damnable beauty. It isn't in lengthy showers with his cheek pressed to cool tile and a hand wrapped around himself and each breath carrying a name— _ his  _ name. It's in every other emotion. It's in smiles being impossible to go unmirrored and an escalation of his pulse before training can even begin and in the fact that he feels a brief gnawing of guilt for the fact that he's pretending anything regarding Gladio isn't incredibly, terribly important. 

If he wants the man buried to the hilt in him, with a hand gripping his hip or his throat or his well-used ass, then so what? Fantasy is fair game. Being in love, and being in love with his best friend—with the future king's sworn shield?  Something else entirely. 

"Noct noticed too." Gladio speaks again when Ignis remains silent for a few beats too long. It makes Ignis go tense—more tense, if that's at all possible. His stomach sinks harsh and heavily and his shoulders sag.  _ That  _ is a problem. Attraction or adoration or anything else, if it's impacting his work with Noctis, it's something that needs to be changed. "Says you're glued to your phone. Don't even hear him when he's talkin' half the time." Gladio elaborates and this time Ignis winces.

Noctis, on that front, is not wrong. 

Ignis curses under his breath and he closes his eyes again, avoiding in advance any reaction Gladio might have to the utterance. He's been distracted. He's been flicking through his phone, waiting for texts. Waiting for plans. Waiting for another excuse to see Gladio, to be near him, to… he forces the line of thought to a halt, sighs and shakes his head and lets himself hunch over further.

"I'll take better care in the future." Ignis keeps his voice cold, detached. There is a part of him who feels exactly that way too, though it is coupled in perfect opposition with the part of him that feels overly warm, feels pinpricks of sweat still blooming at the back of his neck and his breath still coming too quick given the growing tally of minutes between sparring and sitting. He takes another drink. He doesn't look at Gladio. He  _ can't  _ look at Gladio.

"You wanna hear what he thinks?" Gladio asks the question, but he asks it in a way that Ignis knows he doesn't actually need to respond. He could tell the truth—something between 'not particularly' and 'absolutely'—but it would be wasting one of his rapid breaths. Ignis knows Gladio like the back of his hand. He knows the way he speaks, he can hear words before they pass his lips. More problems. More points to ignore. More little fantasies that are almost promised to turn gentle and loving and unforgivable. "Thinks you've got a girl. Thinks you've been keepin' a big romantic secret from us."

Ignis laughs. 

It's an ugly sort of guffaw that turns into something louder and heavier and easier. It's a strange way to release the emotion settled so heavily in his chest. It's just like Noctis, really, to be so close and yet so impossibly far from the truth of the matter. There's something endearing about the mistake, in fact. Noctis understands him—to an extent. His assumptions have an easy way of hitting just an inch or two from the mark though. Case in point. 

"Far from it, I can assure you." He speaks through the laughter and this time he does look at Gladio, he manages to smile in that direction and he manages to do it without his breath halting or turning to gasp. Gladio is smiling, but there's something else in his eyes. He's searching Ignis, he's searching the laughter and the words for  _ something _ . Perhaps, were that distraction not in place, Ignis would be able to determine exactly what line his mind is taking.

"I'm willing to bet it's not  _ that  _ far off." Ignis's laughter comes to an immediate and pointed end. He doesn't look away from Gladio this time, though he desperately wants to. Their eyes are holding, locked together again, and it's suddenly uncomfortable, suddenly a hundred degrees, suddenly a perfect time to get the hell out of the room, the city, perhaps the country as a whole. Ignis swallows and his mouth opens while he considers the possibilities of Lucis rush-ordering a space program.

"I'm glad to know you two spend your time discussing something so trivial and—"

"— _ definitely  _ don't have a girl. Spendin' all your time with me or Noct. Pretty sure that's not really your  _ type  _ anyway." There's a point to what Gladio is saying, but Ignis doesn't want to see it, doesn't want to feel it burying itself so neatly between his ribs. He doesn't look away even now. He doesn't so much as blink. He doesn't  _ breathe _ . He wants to shake Gladio, demand what that point is, and then dismiss it in a huff, to go bury himself under blankets and pretend he hasn't got responsibilities that will draw him immediately back to both. Pretend that he hasn't got a heart fit to burst that will draw him immediately back to Gladio, no matter  _ what  _ he thinks or—more worrisome—what he  _ knows _ .

"Then what  _ do _ I have, Gladio?" Ignis is surprised by his own words, sharp and quick and aimed as daggers. He tries to remind himself that he doesn't want to hear this, that he doesn't want to know. His chest aches, a grip of panic settling there, impossible to shake loose. The only way to go at it is forward. Perhaps he's wrong. Perhaps Gladio doesn't know him quite so well to be bordering on telepathic connection. Certainly nobody could know  _ anyone  _ else so well. Except Ignis feels very much that he knows what Gladio will say and that he will sink through the floor when he says it and, with a little bit of luck, perhaps simply  _ die  _ of shame.

"A crush. Pretty bad one, too." There's a purposeful sort of vagueness to Gladio's response. Ignis is thankful for that much, though he doubts there's any actual question in the other man's mind. He finally tears his eyes away, face gone to flame and heart to thunder. He stares somewhere across the room, indistinct and aimless. He's not sure he properly  _ sees  _ anything at all.

"An absurd thing to be distracted over." Ignis tries to sound dismissive, but he thinks the words come more as a sort of confession. There's certainly now outright denial there. He thinks Gladio is probably still smiling, something gentle and warm and so perfectly at odds with what a casual observer might expect from such a mountainous man. Something that, if Ignis looked and saw, would make his heart flutter and his face redden further. He does not look. Gladio might be wearing any expression at all. He would never know.

"Of course  _ you  _ would think that." He chuckles and Ignis still melts, even without a look at his face. He tries to hold himself steady, tries not to give any real response at all, to let Gladio get whatever thought out of his mind so that they might head down the road of forgetting this conversation ever took place at all. "If it's gotten this bad, you should do something about it."

"I  _ am  _ doing something about it." Ignis doesn't hide any hints of irritation from his voice with that. He doesn't turn his head, though his eyes shift and he catches a hint of Gladio turning quickly to startled, then amusement.

"Yeah? What have you done? 'Cause I hate to break it to you, but it doesn't seem like it's working." Smug. Absolutely  _ smug _ . Ignis feels a harsh tear between an urge to lash out and strike him and a far stronger urge to turn and kiss him and wipe that unbearable little smile from his face. He does neither. Because he  _ does  _ need to respond.

And because he can't rightly say,  _ 'well, Gladio, I'm generally spending my evenings pleasuring myself to a mental image of you pinning me to a wall',  _ however appealing it feels just now. It would be suicide of a sort. At least it would all be done with.

"I'm handling the matter privately." Ignis regrets his choice of words immediately, with the laughter that resounds through the training room, echoes on walls and permeates his entire fucking being. Gladio slaps a hand on his own knee, shakes his head, makes a number of attempts to halt his hysteria before he actually manages to take a breath that ends in something other than that deep, hearty, painfully appealing laughter. And Ignis can't look away again. Hell, even with the embarrassment heating him to the core, he can't help but smile a little himself.  _ Foolish _ . _ This is all so foolish. _

"That's one way to put it." Gladio wipes a tear from his eye and he shakes his head and he smiles with a little bit more sympathy to Ignis. "How's that workin' out for you?" He doesn't manage to make himself sound serious by any means, but he does manage to slide closer on the bench, close some of the distance between them, and it makes Ignis want, just for a moment, to die.

"No worse than doing nothing, I should think." A lot worse, Ignis actually thinks. His mind is already supplying scenarios to visit when he extracts himself from this situation. His eyes are still sweeping occasionally over Gladio's body, taking in the damp coating of sweat, the rise and fall of his chest, the angle of his neck when he turns to look at Ignis and the expression he always manages to wear when they speak. Infinitely, impossibly worse.

"So do something else. I mean, far be it from me to tell you not to  _ handle yourself _ , but maybe you could consider, I dunno, saying something?" Ignis's flush returns with those words and he shakes his head quickly, an attempt both to clear the heat and to dismiss the thought.

"Out of the question. Certainly, if you've given it so much thought, you've come up with some theory as to the culprit." Ignis guides the conversation with a familiar sinking sensation, that same one that he's felt a dozen times in the last quarter hour or so. That one where he simply wishes to seal his fate and move on.

"Might have some suspicions. My suggestion stands, though. What's the worst that could happen, Iggy? Guy like you, almost a guarantee you come out of all this with something better than all that self-handling." Gladio's tone travels between encouraging and teasing, always warm, always so damn warm. It's a lot to unpack, a lot of thoughts tearing Ignis in different directions.

The worst that could happen, Ignis thinks, is that he is subjected to a lifetime of working closely with his suddenly former best friend. One who will never be able to entirely clear Ignis's attraction from his mind. One who will know—perhaps not exactly, but close enough—how much time Ignis has spent locked alone with his hand and some fantasies and Gladio himself as the guest star.

"If that's what you think, then clearly your suspicions are incorrect." Ignis is back to snapping out his words, back to turning his eyes away from Gladio, back to hunching into himself as if he's protected from anything. As if there's anything to protect himself  _ from _ . Never mind that he's still trying to work out exactly what Gladio thinks a  _ guy like him _ is. Or the unasked question as to who, exactly, Gladio thinks he's so interested in if he's clearly not noticed the truth of it.

"Wanna tell me who it is, then?" 

"No."

Silence passes between them. A sort of silence that is long and somehow resounding and all-encompassing. Sure, there is the sound of breath passing between them, the sound of Ignis's pulse throbbing in his ears. There is a scuff of a foot or a distant step down halls. But all that ambiance doesn't shatter the sensation of absolutely no words passing between them, nor the weight of that fact.

"You'll get over it." When Gladio speaks, his voice has changed. The warmth is gone, and Ignis swears a chill passes over the whole room. A strange sensation swirls around his chest, down to his very core. It's something close to guilt. Something evoked so easily with Gladio's words, with the way he says them. "It'll take some time, but you will. I don't think you should, though." 

Ignis inhales sharply when Gladio's fingers cup his chin, turn his face to look at him. It's an explosion of emotions and he doesn't think he can keep a hold of them, not for long. The warmth, too, has fled from Gladio's eyes. He's searching again, for something other than jokes about crushes or explanation of distractions. Ignis can't say for what.

"If you care about someone, and they're worth caring about, it's better to tell them. Better to take the chance. Maybe everything goes to hell, but maybe you get to be really fuckin' happy. Seems worth it to me."

"You sound like you're speaking from experience." Ignis points out, and it's his turn to let some of the hurt leak into his voice. Gladio… no, he hadn't known. He hadn't suspected. Or he wouldn't be making it clear that he understands the situation all too well.  _ Worth it.  _ Not something he would think had he been turned down. He wants to pull away. He wants very badly for Gladio not to be touching him, not to be looking at him. He wants to lock himself in his room and  _ cry _ . Not with anyone's name on his lips. Not with any fleeting pleasure. Only with this strange, cold ache.

"No." Gladio whispers, and suddenly he's close. He's impossibly close, and Ignis doesn't know what he's meant to think all over again. Gladio's hand is at the side of his face, his thumb running across his cheek. Inches. Just inches separate them. Ignis could lean in and kiss him so easily. Just the tiniest shift. Just an impossible amount of courage to make it. "I'm speaking as someone who sat around  _ handling things privately  _ too long and lost his chance."

Ignis is dizzied by one turn after another. There's a fog, a buzzing in his head that he can't determine the source of. He doesn't know what the words mean. Or maybe he does. Or maybe he just  _ wants  _ to know what the words mean, wants to be right. Because being right means that, just maybe, keeping quiet was a pointless route to take.  _ Maybe  _ Gladio wasn't so mistaken in his assessment.  _ Maybe… _

"Don't make the same mistake, that's all I'm saying." Gladio backs off just as abruptly and he stands, gathers up his bag. Ignis is speechless, his mouth hanging, his eyes darting to follow. He wants to stand, but his legs, his whole body, feel so impossibly heavy. So he's standing and he's gaping. "Don't let your heart get broken 'cause you were too afraid to say something. You're better than that."

Ignis's voice doesn't return to him until it's nearly too late. Or maybe it truly  _ is  _ too late, as Gladio is taking wide strides across the room, heading for the door.

"Gladio, Wait, I—"

He's silenced with a wave, Gladio already disappearing through the frame.

"—Save it for next time." 

Ignis manages to break through that fear-struck paralysis to give chase, but Gladio is already gone.    


End file.
